Class Dismissed

by Kevin McIntosh

  The bleat of an aggravated taxi driver brought Patrick back to consciousness. He slapped on the hood, a yard away from his left hip. The turbaned driver flipped him the bird. Patrick flipped back. The driver jammed the gear shift into park and Patrick was jolted by the notion that he was about to duke it out with Hegira’s dad. Didn’t he drive a cab when he wasn’t working in his smoke shop? But just as suddenly he realized that this man, of course, was a Sikh, not a Muslim, that he’d met Hegira’s father––balding, no headwear––and, besides, Patrick was jaywalking and the driver, whoever, of whatever nationality or faith, had the right of way.

  He gave the cabbie an awkward salaam and dashed across Ninth Avenue, receiving several syncopated honks along the way. He’d seen a deer once, caught in the middle of traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge, weave around cars and trucks and buses. He had to keep driving past the terrified beast, even as it reared up on its hind legs alongside him. Against all odds, Patrick made it across Ninth Avenue and kept running, south by southeast, dodging pedestrians, veering into the ungridded streets of the Village.

  Ninth became Hudson and it occurred to him that he was near the White Horse Tavern, where certainly no one would look askance at an early afternoon Guinness. He’d only been there once, a pilgrimage he made his first year in New York when he was still trying to convince his soon-to-be ex, Helene, that he wasn’t just a lowly schoolteacher, that he had a touch of the poet. And he was young and desperate enough to convince himself that drinking on Dylan Thomas’s barstool would yield some cosmic benefit, that some of the Welshman’s genius would rub off from his ass resting on that sacred space.

  The Village businesses––bistros, leather shops––whirred by. For all his sweaty jogging, he hadn’t come to the White Horse yet and that Alice-in-Wonderland feeling he got in the Village took hold, that no streets matched up, that he’d have to run twice as fast to stay in the same place. It seemed he’d crossed West Twelfth several times, that he now stood—soaked, breathless—at the corner of West Twelfth and West Twelfth. But perhaps it was for the best: Helene had been unimpressed by his backside’s brush with greatness at the White Horse and he’d promised his current girlfriend that the 3:00 happy hours were over, now that he was settled in a Rubber Room proper and away from his routine at Marty’s. He’d promised himself, too, that he’d take care of himself, eat better, cut down on the alcohol. Pull yourself together, kid, C had told him. We have just begun to fight.

  He stood rooted at the corner of Twelfth and Twelfth, bent at the waist, hands on his damp middle, gulping the dense May air. He wiped his hands on his khaki pants, now aware that, in his despair, he’d left Proust, key to his self-reclamation, back by the Juggler’s corner. Three years, the Scribbler said. His magnum opus, the work that would bring the Board of Ed to its knees, had been three years in the making. “And your story,” he’d concluded, rising as he lowered his voice, “Student Gives, could be the final chapter.” He paused deliberately. “Think about it.”

  Patrick had thought about it. The more he thought the more he felt the color leave his face, his pale Irish skin so devoid of pigment even the Scribbler noticed. The Juggler dropped an orange that rolled to the Scribbler’s feet.

  The Scribbler had kicked it back and sat. “Your building rep didn’t tell you?”

  Patrick heard C’s nasal tenor: Could be a couple months. Or more. He hadn’t asked how much more. He didn’t want to know.

  “The mediators meet once a month per case. The average case meets,” he glanced at his pad, “twenty or thirty times.” The Scribbler was inscrutable, but had Patrick detected the Scribbler’s pleasure, some schadenfreude at Patrick’s stunned silence? Payback for his indifference to the Scribbler’s grand project? Here they’d sat, blithely swapping literary analogies, when, as the Scribbler knew well, the only relevant parallel was Bleak House, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, on a scale undreamt of by even Dickens’s vast imagination.

  “But,” the Scribbler added, “it can end faster. Some people settle with a fine.” He shrugged away any sense of comfort. “Win or lose, you’re damaged goods.” Then he reached over and patted Proust’s weary face: À la recherche du temps perdu. He stood, took several steps toward his workstation, stopped. He turned back, pointing the leaky pen at Patrick. “Time: it’s only lost if you let them take it from you,” he said, squeezing closed his left eye.

  Patrick assessed the damage: six bucks a fucking pound. His mother would have had a conniption. Not that scallops were available at any price in Peterson’s Prairie, or that his mother would have known what to do with them. Not unless there was a recipe in Ladies Home Journal for “Easy Scallop Loaf.”

  He pushed the fork down on a scallop. It pushed back, way beyond rubbery. And browner than any scallop should ever be. He scattered the scallops around the pan, added another splash of the white wine, as if that would save them. Patrick replenished his glass with the ultra-dry Pouilly-Fuissé the fishmonger at Citarella guaranteed would “impress the little lady.” He flicked one of the brown buttons across the pan, past the capers and garlic shards and onto the floor. He took a gulp of the chardonnay, perfect complement to carbonized bay scallops.

  Chauncey leapt down from his perch atop the refrigerator, pounced on the bouncing scallop and began masticating. It took some effort for him to gum it down, his ancient head bobbing with each chew, gagging as he swallowed. Patrick knew he’d find it in a stewy puddle somewhere, probably inside his dress shoes, where he’d found Chauncey’s latest fur ball.

  For a moment the gagging got so loud it seemed possible that Chauncey’s next chew might be his last. Which would be one positive outcome to this evening. Patrick unwound the dish towel from around his right hand and inspected the four red furrows across the back of it, now swelling. Chauncey licked the extra virgin olive oil off the floor and blinked at Patrick, smiling, smirking. Patrick fought the image––so palpable, so satisfying––of taking a quick step and sending Chauncey soaring across the room.

  Patrick had felt giddy––brilliant!––when it struck him on the corner of West Twelfth and West Twelfth that this was their anniversary––well, one of them––that it was eighteen months to the day that he’d moved his few, humble possessions into Susan’s condo. Susan had made elegant dinners for the six-month and one-year celebrations. But that was then, before her love affair with the women’s shelter, before Josh Mishkin plunged him into the sinkhole of the Rubber Room. Clearly, she’d forgotten. It was an opportunity. He’d surprise her this time, with the grand gesture that could change everything, a romantic turbocharge.

  But he’d fumbled the pacing of this meal, beginning with his sister calling from St. Paul as he was grating carrot into the salad. Their relationship had been distant through the years––birthday and Christmas presents for his twin nephews––but they’d reconnected since he’d let her in on his current crisis. Erin, whom he’d dismissed in high school as pretty and empty-headed, had emerged in adulthood as an ER nurse in the Hennepin County hospital and über-competent mother-of-two, as the voice of reason, of wisdom, even. Yes, public education in New York City was a puzzle, but severed digits didn’t faze her.

  “Ah,” was all she said when he described the dinner he was whipping up.

  “What?” he said, defensive, like they were kids.

  “No,” she laughed, “it’s great, amazing. Especially with all the stuff you’ve got going on.”

  “What, then?” He began chopping walnuts, smaller than necessary, for the raspberry-walnut vinaigrette.

  “Oh, it’s just,” she sighed a maternal sigh, their mother’s sigh, “these little ‘anniversaries’ go away. And once you’re planning parties for twelve four-year-olds, no one remembers the dog ever had a birthday. But,” he could hear her wave the thought away, “all the more reason to enjoy them while you can.”

  She rang off with the chipperness she shared, cell-deep, with their mother, but the
end of the call brought him back to earth. Damn. He’d absent-mindedly dressed the salad he’d been saving for the last moment. He took a sip of wine and popped in the cassette of More Sinatra Hits, his favorite musical pick-me-up.

  I am so aw-f’ly mis-un-der-stood/so lady be good/to me…

  He sang with Frank, poorly. He danced even worse. But nothing blended carefree optimism and melancholy like Sinatra’s voice. Your baby left you? Frank shrugged. Been there, brother. Lost your job? Have another scotch, crooned Ol’ Blue Eyes. Fly with him!

  Patrick’s spirits rebounded back to that moment on Twelfth and Twelfth when, gasping for breath, he’d convinced himself to disregard the Scribbler’s nasty revelation. Who knew how long he’d be in the Rubber Room? Who made the Scribbler God? It was their anniversary, damn it. Celebrate!

  He’d hopped the No. 1 train at Christopher Street and headed to the uptown Citarella’s on Seventy-Fifth and Broadway, where he’d long admired the gleaming seafood in the window, sprawled across sparkling beds of ice, displayed like necklaces at Tiffany’s. The sea scallops he’d fantasized about on the train would require a small loan to finance, but the fishmonger rhapsodized over the bay scallops––more affordable––and how sweet, how beautifully they’d sauté. You spread ’em on a little linguine, he said, find the right wine. Doesn’t have to be pricey, just right for the meal––and her. And then he winked, a wink that assured that the meal itself would be an erotic adventure, let alone what happened once the scallops were a memory and the wine bottle empty.

  But after Erin’s call, his trio with Frank and Sammy on “I’ve Got the World on a String” and that third glass of chardonnay, Patrick lost all sense of time. Temps perdu that no amount of searching could find. Sauté for two to three minutes, the man said. Five, tops. Start the linguine first. All about timing.

  At 6:45, he’d panicked. He heard their down-the-hall neighbor, Ashley, and her Pomeranian, Mr. Paws, going for their evening walk. And he heard Susan, who never got home before seven on a Wednesday, greet them. Susan always came home famished and he’d envisioned the main course plated, dramatically, as she came in the door. The girls were chatting down by the elevator. Mr. Paws yapped his two-minute warning; Ashley wouldn’t risk him peeing in the hallway again. Patrick lit the candles, arranged the baguette slices in the breadbasket, shifted the single red rose that leaned in its skinny vase. He turned on the gas under the pre-heated water in the pasta pot.

  Now was the moment: Frank was launching into the pop-opera of “My Way”; Nelson Riddle’s horns were building; the water was boiling. He tossed the linguine fini into the pot, hit the timer. He waited as long as he dared, then eased the gleaming scallops in with the sautéed garlic and capers, giving the mélange a loving swirl with the long wooden spoon.

  Ashley yelped. New Yorkers famously ignore the cries of the imperiled, but no Minnesota boy could disregard a lady’s scream. Patrick ran to the hallway, where he didn’t find Susan, but Ashley, with Mr. Paws straining at the leash wrapped around one of her legs, snarling at an Irish setter twice his size. The setter’s owner, an elegant elderly woman who lived one floor up, heaved on her dog’s leash.

  “Are you okay?” Patrick yelled down the hall.

  “Yes,” Ashley laughed as the old woman yanked her dog into the elevator and Mr. Paws unwound himself from her leg.

  “Enjoy your walk then,” Patrick hollered, turning to the door and finding Chauncey in the hallway, blinking, shaking his head as if wakened from a deep sleep. “Chauncey, inside, fella.” Patrick nudged the lumpish body with his foot. Chauncey rolled on his back. “C’mon, boy.” Patrick could feel the scallops hardening, the linguine softening. The cat wouldn’t budge. Patrick tried to pick him up, closer than his allergies allowed, but could gain no purchase beneath the fur and fat. He knelt and tried to scoop him up like a football, nose to nose. He sneezed and Chauncey recoiled, hissing and raking a paw over Patrick’s right hand. Patrick cursed and dropped him, and the cat scampered down the hallway with surprising speed. “Get back here,” he yelled. He examined the back of his hand, where four red rivulets ran. “You waste of fur.”

  Leave him, was his first thought, but it would kill the occasion if Susan came home to find her––their––aged baby abandoned, wandering the hallway. Back in Darien, in Susan’s girlhood, Chauncey once went missing and Susan had cried for two days imagining him dead. The trauma was deep; she still went looking for him if he napped under their bed. Susan was a model of calm and rationality regarding everything but her pet. Patrick raced toward Chauncey and the cat ran past him––when had he ever run?––to the other end of the hallway. They repeated this routine several times, revealing the playfulness Susan always insisted was one of Chauncey’s many charms.

  The timer was beeping; Patrick ran to rescue the meal. Chauncey trotted after him and bound up to the counter, onto the refrigerator. Patrick turned off the gas, threw the linguine into the colander. The steam cleared to reveal a total loss: the six-dollars-a-pound scallops were vulcanized, the pasta glutinous. The back of his hand stung. He rinsed it in cold water and wrapped a dish towel around it. Patrick poured himself more chardonnay, added a splash to the skillet, flicked a scallop to the floor. Chauncey pounced, chewed, hacked.

  “Whoa, what a day!” Susan called out, opening the door. “You won’t believe what happened at the board meeting––” she set her purse down on the couch, looked up. Susan was even lovelier than usual, pale cheeks flushed from the heat of the day, her lithe figure draped in his favorite sky blue summer dress. Just as he’d envisioned her. Somehow, this made it worse.

  “Hey, what’s the occasion?” She gestured toward the candles, the rose. Patrick smiled weakly. Chauncey licked the floor and blinked up in kittenish innocence.

  “Our anniversary?” He’d meant it to sound celebratory, not j’accuse.

  “Next week? No?” She looked at the white board that was their makeshift events calendar. Today said Board Meeting in her lovely prep school script. Underneath it––next Wednesday––Susan had drawn a heart with an arrow through it.

  He felt that last thread tethering him to reality snap. “Yes,” he sighed, “next week. It is.”

  “Hey, makes it more of a surprise.” Susan was a social worker; her first impulse was rescue.

  Patrick would not be rescued. “It was,” he grumbled, lifting the skillet over the sink, spooning the scallops into the disposal. He hit the disposal button and listened to his romantic dream ground up. But Frank would have none of it: to the moon or bust.

  Susan peered into the sink and gave his cheek a wary kiss. “What was for dinner?”

  “Scallops,” he looked at the flaccid mound in the colander, “over linguine.”

  “Oh, honey, my favorite.” She poured herself some chardonnay, noting the vintage and the less-than-half remaining. “What happened?”

  “Your cat. Happened.”

  “Chauncey?” She gurgled some wine, covered her mouth. “Ruined dinner?” Chauncey circled his spot on the couch, plopped down.

  “Mr. Paws got in a fight…Chauncey got in the hallway…” he waved his wrapped hand. “I tried to––”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  Patrick unwrapped it.

  Susan gasped. “Oh, Pat. Chauncey did that?” She looked doubtful, despite the evidence. Perhaps he’d cut himself in four parallel lines. “Did you put iodine on that?”

  He nodded. Better to die of infection than have that argument.

  Susan fetched large Band-Aids and iodine from the bathroom and played Florence Nightingale with his right hand. She sat on the couch next to her cat, took hold of his puffy head. “You bad boy,” she said in that baby voice reserved for her pet. “It’s weird. He never scratches, you know.”

  “Well, he does now,” Patrick muttered, dumping the linguine into the disposal.

  My God! She was like one of th
ose mothers of demon spawn who were convinced their children were angels. Oh, he never does that at home, Mr. Lynch.

  “I’ve only seen him scratch when he’s really hungry.” She pinned Chauncey’s ears back. “But you fed him, right?”

  Patrick looked at Susan, then Chauncey. Then at the refrigerator where, for the first time, he saw her note: PAT—REMEMBER CAT FOOD. THX. S. He closed his eyes. He saw Chauncey pouncing on that scallop, wolfing it down. Fall on your sword, Patrick, he told himself. Surrender, simple. Simple, but impossible. His account at the Bank of Apology was overdrawn.

  “I was going to get some after dinner.” Lame. Dog-ate-my-homework lame. Mr. Lynch would have laughed him out of class.

  “You got scallops but not cat food?”

  The words were judgmental, sure, but her tone left room for negotiation. He could have said “fancy that” and chuckled and run out and come back with the cat food and some pad Thai and listened to Susan reenact the drama of the women’s shelter board meeting. Peace––romance, even––might still ensue. He’d defused a thousand tenser classroom moments with less. In better times he would have done just that. But they were way past better times.

  “Yes,” he said, drying the colander with the bloody dish towel, “I got the scallops first. They don’t have cat food at Citarella’s.” Especially, he wanted to add, not five-pound bags of organic, ash-and-phosphate-free kibble, hand-crafted in Southern France by Capuchin nuns for the delicate kidneys of aged felines.

  “I appreciate the effort, Pat. I do. The scallops and the rose. The wine.” It wasn’t her words that grated but the delivery, the slow over-enunciation. The pause before “wine.” Yes, he’d had a couple glasses while he was cooking. So what? Didn’t every chef in France? “But we’ve talked about this. We agreed you were going to help take care of Chauncey.” The two, Susan and her cat, stared at him, Susan patting Chauncey’s head so it bobbed in agreement with the hard bargain they’d struck.